[Python-Dev] New functionality in micro releases (was: Documenting branch policy)

[Just van Rossum]

Jack Jansen wrote:

> On 7-sep-03, at 21:15, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> > This question is heavily debated. Alex Martelli, for example,
> > favours a policy where new (in a strict sense) features are
> > acceptable if they don't break anything, and are "minor", in some
> > sense.
> 
> With Python 2.3 included in MacOSX 10.3 I would be heavily opposed to
> this. I know, I've done it myself all the time in the past (with
> MacPython for OS9), but with Python 2.3 we have the situation that
> the majority of Python installations (I think it's safe to take the
> guess that MacOSX 10.3 installations will soon outnumber all other
> Pythons together) will stay at 2.3 until the next release of MacOSX.

It's been a huge pain with 2.2 vs. 2.2.1 even: all stuff written for
2.2.1 that uses booleans does _not_ work on plain 2.2, which is what's
installed on OSX 10.2. Which sortof kills the advantage of having a
Python installed with the OS to begin with. In retrospect, I would have
been strongly against adding booleans to 2.2.1 for this reason. Apart
from real bugs, I think every program that works on 2.x.y should work on
2.x.z, regardless of whether y > z or y < z.

Just